The Gauntlet
by JonaBee
Summary: A bunch of random, rapid fire ideas. Since Weebee's involved, all Ranma xovers. Expect a lot of orphaned prologues/ch 1s.
1. Daria fic

Hello, readers, and the morbidly curious. Before you get panicked, no, this isn't the Jonabee version of Weebee's vault, and no, we're not going to retire old fics here when we get tired of them. What this fic is for is to showcase any random ideas we have, and see what your oppinions are, to avoid creating a huge number of one chapter wonders like Weebee's got on his fanfic page.

Given that we are even more active at coming up with random, wierd ideas than either of us alone, we felt that you should see some of them.

Please take these fics with a grain of salt. Many of them were probably written on a caffine high or in an hour of lobbing ideas back and fourth like particularely volitile hand grenades, but don't hesitate to tell us if they suck, or if we've achieved awesomness by accident.

Also, about athor's notes? Don't expect spell checking on those. What do you want? We're evil.

Without further rambling, other than the rambling at the end of the chapter, there'll be plenty of that, we present the first idea. The untitled Daria crossover of DOOM!

*Crack-A-Thoom!*

It was only a few days after the failed wedding and Tatewaki was spending the lovely, sunny day facing off against a tree, not moving as he waited for his adversary to make the first strike. That horrid event, mere days before, had shaken his stolid resolve. Verily, he had prevented the foul sorcerer Saotome from cementing his vile grasp upon his fierce tigress, but there had been several close calls when one of the guests had stumbled into his just strike, causing him to stop it abruptly. He doubted his father would object to that one girl's haircut, but such things were not to be discussed.

In any event, his normal means would no longer be adequate, as the insidious Saotome drew innocents protectively around himself like moths around a flame. As such, he, the Blue Thunder of Furinkin High, would need to devise a new method of attack. But what would the Heavens find most righteous?

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a leafy movement. "I strike!" he valiantly declared, slashing at the shrubbery.

"Why is my Tachi-chan so upset that he attacks da Big Kahuna for no reason? " the mad growth demanded, and the young kendoist quickly realized that it was his deranged father's rather... disturbing head ornament.

"Whilst I do not wish to discuss the will of the Heavens with one such as you," Kuno began, "I fear that I have reached an impasse in my quest."

"And what is the Big Kahuna's Tachi-chan tryin ta do?" the crazed father asked. Tatewaki acknowledged that, while he was most assuredly not suitable for raising one such as Saotome, Kocho Kuno was still a father, with the occasional paternal urge.

"Tis a thing most worrisome," the noble samurai in training admitted. "I wish to rid the land of the blighted presence of that accursed fiend Saotome. Mine own sword has been found unreliable in battle. Even one such as I cannot predict the movements of every plebeian watching my great conquest over evil."

"I see," the elder Kuno replied, stroking his palm tree in thought. "Give yo Daddy a little time, and the Saotome boy will be out of ya hair. The Big Kahuna'll be taken care of dat keiki in da mornin."

HR.

"All right, what's this all about?" Ranma demanded, as he casually leaned out of the way of yet another desperate lunging strike from the principal's clippers, causing the older man to tear up a strip of bark off of one of the large palm trees that he'd taken to keeping in his office.

"Ah, good question from such a bad keiki, dat is," the elder Kuno said, straightening and tucking his weapon into a pocket on the front of his usual loud Hawaiian shirt. "I been noticin," he said, turning and walking to a hammock that had been strung up between his desk and the window sill, "dat you been absent a lot dees past few weeks, yeah? I been tinkin, why would dat be?"

Ranma frowned, at the moment, he really didn't want to talk about the events ofPhoenixMountain, especially to this lunatic. "Is there somethin you're gettin at?" he demanded, irritably.

"Be patient, little one," the palm-tree haired man rebuked, bringing a finger up and waggling it at his student, before reaching into his hammock to retrieve a sheaf of documents. "Now, me be checkin, and da big Kahuna be tinkin dat you like movin 'round. You always travelin wit your fadda. Me be tinkin dat you gotta be doin dat, or ya start slackin off in your studies an' bein a bad keiki."

The pigtailed boy shrugged uncomfortably. To tell the truth, the old man was right, in some respects. He had been feeling the urge to put on his pack and go hunting for some new style to master ever since a few months after entering the Tendo home, but he'd usually assuaged that with weekend trips into the martial artist infested back streets of Nerima. "Look, I checked my grades. I ain't failing, even with the trip I took," he said, seriously.

"Yeah, but I be wantin all my little boys and girls to be happy, 'so dat dey obey da school rules and not be delinquants," Kuno replied. "So... I took da liberty 'o arrangin for a little trip for you in the exchange program."

"You what?" Ranma asked, deadpan.

"No need ta tank me. You be goin ta de greatUnited StatesofAmericafor a li'l trip. I be wantin ta send you to de islands, but I couldn't swing it, I'm afraid," the Hawaiian loon proclaimed, raising two thumbs in a victory sign.

"Look, that's, er, nice," the pigtailed martial artist started, wondering precisely what coconuts for brains' newest plan to make the students miserable was, "but..."

"No need ta be thankin me, keiki, da Big Kahuna be happy to help.. Now, how's about you surf off back ta your class, yeah?"

"Surf off..." Ranma said, just as the principal pulled a leaver next to the hammock, and a large stream of water came flowing out of a hatch in the ceiling, tossing the Jusenkyo cursed figure through the door and out into the hallway. By the time the redhead managed to cough most of the stuff out of her lungs, Principal Kuno had vanished.

HR.

"Twenty-five thousand yen?" Ranma grumbled, as he looked into the window of a small house, the last one on the list that Nabiki had given him to check out. Given that he only had a hundred thousand total, and he hadn't gotten the documentation through that would allow him to work, paying that much per week probably wouldn't work. He sighed. "Great," he muttered. "Guess I should find a spot to set up the tent."

Walking down the street and searching for the nearest park, the pigtailed martial artist frowned. "I've only been here a day, 'n I'm already irritated," he grumbled. He'd already had to fork over five thousand yen for a single night in a hotel room, and the principal, for all of his 'infinite wisdom,' hadn't bothered to set him up with a place to stay, and it was getting late.

"Stupid Kuno, stupid school," he muttered. Nabiki, for once in her life, had actually decided to be helpful and tried to find a way to keep him from being sent here, but unfortunately a year and a half at Furinkan had done its damage, and he was looked upon with something like horror by every other school in the Tokyo area.

Given that, his mother had decided that going to America would be better for him than having to move to Osaka or something. For a moment, he smiled as he recalled the beating he'd given the coconut headed principal after he'd finally realized that he had no way out, but his attention was drawn away from that thought as he saw a large expanse of green before him. He nodded. The place looked perfect. It was a wide, open place for practice, and beyond it was a large, grey-black bulk that looked like the high school.

For all he knew, it was the sports field, but he could probably clear away his camp site before anyone wanted to use it, and he was tired from the flight over the ocean and the long walk afterward. Unslinging his backpack, he untied the small bundle that contained his one-man tent, and began setting it up. Crawling in and settling down on the futon, he looked up into the roof of the tent and smiled. He had to admit that camping out again did feel kind of good, and when he got completely set up, he could go hunting for martial artists on weekends.

He'd heard something about United States Marines being pretty tough, and wondered if there was a base nearby as he drifted off.

HR.

As the body fell towards him, Ranma reacted instinctively, bringing his feet up to catch the incoming projectile in mid-back. Pushing up rapidly, he sent it into the air, and it slammed into the ground a few feet from the entrance of the tent. "Guh?" the pigtailed martial artist muttered, raising one hand to rub the sleep from his eyes, and wondering what was going on.

Something had just been thrown at him, this he knew, but he wasn't sure what it was. Looking up, he noticed that the support poles at the top of the tent had been badly mangled, and some cloudy grey light was poking through a hole ripped in the material. "Crap," he muttered in Japanese, rolling sideways and poking his head out of the door flap to look into pain clouded eyes.

"Owie," the owner of said eyes groaned, as Ranma blinked at him.

"You the guy who fell on my tent?" he asked casually, trying to keep the accent out of his voice as best he could, and failing miserably.

"Mmhmm," the other said, still quite obviously in a great deal of pain. Ranma sighed, re-entering his tent for just long enough to get changed into the only set of spare clothes he'd brought, and exiting to note that several people were now standing around looking at him in astonishment.

"Dude, who sets up a tent on a football field?" one asked, scratching the top of his head.

"Yeah, he doesn't look like Mr. DeMartino," another boy, this one with darker skin, commented.

"Didn't know you guys'd be playin at," Ranma began before looking towards the sun for a moment, "seven in the mornin."

"My legs feel all tingly," the boy Ranma had launched earlier commented.

"Yeah," the dark skinned boy replied. "Our school has always been very committed to sports. We practice several hours every day. Oh, and I'm Mack. You must be new here. I'll show you to the Principal's office." Ranma shrugged and figured it couldn't be worse than trying to find it himself.

"Hey, Mack Daddy," the prone figure called out. "We still have practice to finish, right?"

"No, Kevin. I think we're done for the morning," came Mack's exasperated reply. "I'll be sure to let the nurse know you're out here. And don't call me that." Turning back to the new student, Mack said, "Sorry, I didn't catch your name."

"I'm Ranma Saotome," the Japanese boy responded. He watched for a second as the other football players went to the other half of the field and continued their practice, leaving Kevin stranded on the ground. "Should you just be leaving him like that?"

"He'll be fine," Mack replied. "It shouldn't take too long for me to get you to the office, and the nurse is the next door over."

With a shrug, Ranma knelt down and quickly and efficiently repacked his bag, leaving the tent closer to the top than he normally would so that he could repair it later. Once everything was away, the martial artist said, "Lead on, then."

HR.

Margret Manson looked over her glasses at the student before her, feverishly taking notes on the clipboard that she held, incidentally in the trademark illegible scrawl of anyone remotely associated with the medical profession.

"Now, Mr. Soutomie," the woman began, as she noted the boy's rather odd dress sense, "can you tell me again what you see there?" She gestured down to an image on the table, which showed the outline of two people, the one who looked female raising her hand in front of the male one's face.

The martial artist sighed, from where he was sitting across the table, his fist propping up his chin. "Two people, a guy 'n a girl," he said, appearing as though his boredom was about to stop his breathing.

"All right," the woman said, "what do you think is going on in the image, Mr. Soutomei?"

The martial artist scowled irritably at the second mangling of his name in less than a minute, but then turned his eyes to the image, taking note of the hand on the woman's hip, and the outstretched hand. "She's probably yellin at him for something," he offered. "Probably thinks he was doing somethin perverted and is about to smack 'im across the face. Of course, he probably didn't do anything. ...at least, I don't see a Bokkuto, so he probably didn't do anything."

"I see," the psychologist said, and then flipped the paper with the image on it over. "And this?"

The black outline on the other side of the page was what looked like a four legged animal, with a thin tail curling out the back, and triangular ears. Ranma flinched back at the sight of it, as though he had been burnt. "... that?" he asked, nervously.

Mrs. Manson adjusted her glasses. "Yes, that."

"It's a furry hellbeast come to tear out my soul and eat the still warm carcass whole, before which it'll probably play with the intestines like string," he said, matter-of-factly.

"I... see," the woman said slowly, before grabbing the paper and quickly slipping it into her labcoat. "Well, I think that's all we need for now, thank you."

Ranma sighed in relief and turned to exit the room, while the psychologist held up the questionnaire he'd filled out before the live interview. "Water based?" she muttered, confused.

HR.

Ranma sighed in relief as he exited the rather claustrophobic little room where he'd taken the psychological exam, entering a scene of rapidly bustling students, rushing to the second class of the morning.

Consulting the little temporary schedule he'd been given, until his 'skills' could be fully assessed,' he noted that he had a history class on the second floor, and headed for the room listed, hoping that the school was laid out at least somewhat like Furinkan.

Unfortunately, the hope wasn't precisely realized, as he found that the letter and number based system he was used to had been replaced with a strange three digit room identification code, and he'd had to ask directions five times by the time he made it to Mr. DeMartino's history class.

"Now class," he heard as he pushed open the door to the room as quietly as he could, "We were SUPPOSED to have two new students TODAY, but ONE of them decided not to SHOW up this morning," a rather harsh sounding male voice blasted out at him, the odd emphasis put on some of the words making it somewhat hard to understand.

"Um, sir?" he asked, deciding to be polite for once since it was pretty much his fault that he was late. "Sorry I'm late."

"Ah, the prodigal student RETURNS," the man said, though as he turned towards the Japanese martial artist, one eye seemed to bulge out of his head. "And what in HELL are you wearing, BOY?"

"Uh," Ranma said, looking confused as he checked his clothing. At the moment he was fully dressed, and the clothes, his old Chinese military uniform, were gender appropriate. "Didn't know this school had a dress code," he offered hesitantly, looking into the room to note that the closest things to 'uniforms' there were a girl in a cheerleader's outfit and the guy he'd kicked earlier, who was still wearing his football uniform.

"Dress code?" the teacher asked. "Dress code? Do you have ANY idea what you're wearing? That UNIFORM is completely and totally disrespectful to the FREEDOM of the United States! It's a SYMBOL of the Chinese military. You're a TRAITOR to our GREAT nation!"

"Oh, that," Ranma said, shrugging and flicking his pigtail. "Y'know I'm not an American, right?"

The man stopped for a moment, his eyes bulging again, and Ranma could swear that he saw a vain inside one of them throbbing. "That's not the POINT!" he sputtered.

"'N besides," Ranma continued, ignoring the man's last statement, "you got no idea how I found these clothes."

"And precisely HOW would the way you obtained those make them any LESS of an insult?" DeMartino demanded, stomping back to his desk, as his students watched the exchange between him and the new arrival with some fascination.

The martial artist fidgeted for a moment, and then mumbled something.

"Speak up!" DeMartino demanded.

"I... kinda stole them from a Chinese army patrol while running from a psychotic amazon with a broadsword," Ranma said, as quickly as he could.

"OH, well that's different, THEN," the teacher said, before a contemplative expression entered his features. "And you know Janet BERCH?"

"Huh?" the martial artist asked, blinking stupidly.

"Never mind. Just ANSWER one question. When did the current GOVERNMENT overthrow the former Chinese government?" the history teacher barked.

"Well, the encirclement campaign started in 1927, but the real war took place from 1946 to 1950, and the government only declared everything under control in 1991," Ranma replied, glad that he was being asked about military history, something he actually was reasonably good at.

"Not entirely ACCURATE, but better than most of these MEAT HEADS could do," the teacher nodded. "Take your seat, MR. Saotome. Now, since I've already asked ONE of our new students a question on his first day, let's get back on TOPIC with the next one. Ms. Morgendorfer, please CONCISELY and unemotionally define the concept of manifest DESTINY for the class!"

Ranma didn't pay much attention as a rather scarily monotone voice emitted from a seat near the middle of the class, rattling off the answer, as he selected his seat in the back, near the football player. "Hey, you all right?" he asked, a little worried for the other boy's lower back.

"Oh yeah!" the football pad wearing boy exclaimed. "I only have a few shooting pains in my leg now!"

"Mr. THOMPSON, is there something you would like to SHARE with the rest of the CLASS?" Mr. DeMartino asked.

"Oh, no, I'm fine," Thompson said cheerfully, waving casually.

DeMartino sighed explosively, before turning back to the brown haired girl with the monotone voice. "Do you SEE what I have to DEAL with?" he asked, his eyeball bulging again. "Now you understand why I CHERISH anyone with more than two BRAIN CELLS to rub together. Now, let's MOVE on with this class."

Ranma leaned back in his seat, ready to listen for at least a little while before passing out. After all, he'd actually gotten a good night's sleep the night before.

HR.

"So, how are our little ducklings?" Ms. Li asked, seated behind her heavy, wooden desk.

Mrs. Manson shuffled through her files for a moment before setting them down. "They actually did better than I expected," the psychologist confided. "I was afraid it would be like the last testing, where almost everyone failed the evaluation. Luckily, we only had two problem children today. One is a Dara Morgendorfer, and the other is a Ranma Soutomie. The former merely has a case of low self-esteem. Mr. Soutomie, on the other hand, has a host of problems that should have him transferred to a different school at the very least."

"I see," Ms. Li said, a little nervously. "Exactly how bad is he?"

"Quite frankly, I'm not sure," the psychologist admitted. "He obviously has low self esteem. For instance, when asked 'what are your feelings when something goes wrong?' he answered 'it was either my fault or someone is going to blame me anyways.'" Taking a breath, she continued, " And then there was that part with hell beasts trying to take his soul. I think he may be susceptible to any cult that approaches him."

"I see. Unfortunately, we still have to accept him, despite the glaring reasons we shouldn't," Ms. Li said through gritted teeth. "We were given $50,000 to take him in. Most of it's already been invested into a new wing for the school, as well as a few new classes. If we get rid of Saotome, the money goes with him. Now, I need those reports to say that he only has low self-esteem. That we can accept. Any form of true psychosis cannot be found."

"Ma'am, you know that I ethically cannot change my records and..."

"One of those classes is Psychology," the principal stated.

"... I must have made a mistake while evaluating his test," Mrs. Manson concluded. "I'll just go fix that. Though there is still one thing that confuses me." Pulling out the questionaire and pointing to a specific line, she asked, "How can his sex be water based?"

"Yes, that," Ms. Li began. "That has been explained to me, in part by his former principal. It's apparently a medical condition."

"You're joking, right?" the psychologist all but pleaded. "What kind of medical condition can cause water to do that?"

"I don't know, and I expect that I would rather not know, but that is irrelevant at the moment. Right now, I have two phone calls to make. Knowing a dismissal when she heard one, Mrs. Manson turned and left, the soon-to-be-doctored report in hand.

Dialing an unusually long number into the phone, the principal winced as the digital display informed her of the long distance charges from hell. Waiting for the phone on the other end of the line to ring several times, she finally heard it picked up, before a kind sounding female voice announced "Moshi moshi, Tendo Kei."

"God damn it," the black haired woman grumbled, staring at the handset for a few seconds, before lowering it to the cradle.

As it clicked down, a faint voice could be heard from the other end. "Oh, you speak English? I'm sorry, this is Kasumi Tendo, how may I hel..." Click.

HR.

"First time I've ever been attacked by flying soda cans," Ranma muttered, rubbing the side of his face, where a visible lump was forming.

"Oh man, dude, I'm sorry about that," Kevin said, coming in behind the martial artist, carrying a can of coke. "I just dropped it, I didn't know you were under there."

Ranma shrugged, and allowed the football player to come up beside him, before plucking the pop out of his hand. "It's okay," he said, "I've been hit harder than that, but the soda's mine."

Kevin shrugged. "Fair enough," he agreed. As the pigtailed boy walked off, flipping the can in his hand and turning it into more and more of a ticking time bomb, he didn't notice Britney, the cheerleader from history class the day before, walking up to Kevin and hugging him happily, babbling something high pitched and mostly lost to the high speed at which she was doing the babbling.

Unfortunately, he also didn't notice Ms. Li, as she walked up behind him, and cleared her throat. "Mr. Saotome," she said, irritably, causing Ranma to jump a few feet, sending the can into the air.

At about this point, the poor abused piece of aluminum had already been dropped from the school's bleachers by Kevin, through the top of Ranma's tent, where it had destroyed the patch he'd put on the hole the football player had made the day before, and hit the Japanese boy's rather thick skull.

Coupled with the flipping it had just taken, the metal finally decided that it had had quite enough of this garbage, thank you very much, and split along one of the dents on its side. sending foamy, sticky, and most importantly cold liquid into Ranma's face.

The redhead groaned, peeling some of her hair from her eyes, and turned slowly to face the principal, who had managed, somehow, to avoid getting any of the stuff on her own immaculate grey suit.

"Ah, yes, Mr. Saotome," she said, blinking at the rapid physical transformation, but rolling forward over it as though it hadn't happened. "Do you know you don't have a phone?"

"Um, I live in a tent," the student returned, as though it was obvious.

"Oh, well, that will have to change soon. It's far too hard to get a hold of you," the dark haired woman complained. "We've gotten your psychological test results back, as well as your grade transcripts from Furinkan. According to the grade curves from the Japanese system to ours, you can stay in the classes you're in now, but I'm afraid you'll have to take a supplementary course on self-esteem."

"Self... what?" Ranma asked, rolling the unfamiliar word around in her head. It hadn't been in the base level English that she'd learned in the Japanese military bases, and Hinako-sensei had been more interested in making sure he knew the English names of all of the Sailor Senshi than bothering with complex words in the language.

"You know, self-image," the principal asked, slightly discomforted at the blank look she was being given.

"So... you wanna take pictures of me?" Ranma tried, frowning. "I can just give you some of the ones Nabiki took, if you want."

"Look, I'm not trained to explain it," the older woman explained patiently, "just please see Mr. O'Neill in room 116 after class, all right?"

"Okay, if it's important," Ranma shrugged, and started turning from the principal, before the other caught her arm.

"Oh, and here, take this," she extended a small card with 'hall pass' written across the top. "Clean yourself up before first period, all right?"

Ranma nodded, grateful for the opportunity to change back to normal form, as she headed for the nearest men's washroom, ignoring the red haired boy who stared at her in astonishment as she entered. He was in the middle of making an odd growling sound, when the martial artist splashed herself with hot water, and the noise died a horrible, painful death in his throat.

HR.

"Esteem... a teen. They don't really rhyme, do they? The sounds don't quite mesh," the brown haired teacher said from where he was sitting, straddling his chair. "And that, in fact, is often the case when it comes to a teen and esteem. The two just don't seem to go together."

Ranma, who had been trying to pay attention, he really had, was having trouble understanding what exactly esteem was. It wasn't as though the teacher had bothered defining it at all. Slumping down a little further in his seat, he glanced around while hoping to find out what this class was actually supposed to be about.

He looked over to his right where that monotone girl from his history class was sitting, doodling in her notebook. It took a little effort, but he managed to unobtrusively angle himself enough to see what she had been drawing. Thus, everyone was already looking at him when he started snickering at the cheese headed man. Throughout this all, no pause was given to the lecture.

"But we are here to begin realizing your actuality" Mr. O'Neill was continuing. The girl next to him stopped her doodling and raised her hand.

When the lecturing, if it could be called such, continued, the girl waved her hand a little more before presumably getting rather fed up. "Excuse me," she said, with no response. "Excuse me," she said more strongly. "I have a question."

"I'm sorry," the teacher tried. "Question and answer time is later."

"But I want to know what 'recognizing your actuality' means," Daria tried, and Ranma nodded in wholehearted agreement.

Mr. O'Neill was beginning to sweat a little. "It means... look, just let me get through this part, okay? Then there'll be a video!"

The girl sitting behind Daria leaned over and, in a gravelly whisper, confided, "He doesn't know what it means. He just has the whole thing memorized. Just enjoy the nice man's soothing voice."

"How am I supposed to follow him if I can't tell what he's talking about?" Daria asked.

"You too?" Ranma cut in. "I thought it was just the language barrier."

"Oh?" the girl asked.

"I'm still getting used to English," Ranma admitted.

"Ah. Don't worry about it. I'll fill you in later," the girl continued. "I've taken the class six times, so I know what I'm talking about."

With the plans of action established, Ranma and the two girls allowed themselves to be lulled into a slight doze.

HR.

"Okay, so what's going on?" Ranma asked, as he, the gravely voiced girl and the monotone girl exited the 'self-esteem' lecture. "He sounded sorta like this Buddhist monk I met a while back, but he was more twitchy than enlightened."

"I think Mr. O'Neill might have seen a monk on TV. Once, for a few seconds, while half asleep," the black haired girl offered.

"So, all he does is regurgitate the same speech every few months?" the brown haired girl, who Ranma had heard identified as 'Morgendorfer' by Mr. DeMartino in the class the day before, asked.

"Yup," the black haired girl replied. "And we just sit there and let it flow like water in one ear and out the other. A beautiful experience, really. Kinda zen."

"Right, like what's the sound of one idiot talking to himself?" Morgendorfer asked, deadpan.

The black haired girl chuckled. "Yeah, kinda like that. So, you two are new, right? Most of the time they don't send regular students to join our little corner of purgatory. I'm Jane, by the way."

"I dunno, I've been around for about sixteen years, the paint's been pealing for a while," Morgendorfer contributed. "and it's Daria. or, 'that kid with the glasses.' I've got other names, but I'd have to kill you."

Ranma was about to complete the introductions, when the three stepped out from the school's front entrance, and he walked into a sheet of falling rain. "Damn it," she muttered, irritably.

"Hmm, weather man was wrong again," Daria observed.

"You do know that a guy just turned into a girl right in front of us, right?" Jane commented, looking at both of her companions rather warily.

"I was vaguely aware of that, yes," Daria replied, "but I never pass up a chance to criticize the Weather Channel. Smug bastards."

"You're taking this well," Ranma noted, looking at Daria just as strangely as Jane had before.

"You watch Sick Sad World long enough, nothing surprises you," Daria contributed.

"Hey, you think we can call this one in?" Jane speculated.

"I'm standin right here, ya know," Ranma objected indignantly.

"Besides, do you really think it can surpass the cattle branding and farmer abduction story?" Daria asked.

"So, yeah, what's this class all about?" Ranma said, deciding that if the others weren't going to make a big deal of the curse, she wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

"Oh, yeah, O'Neill wants all of us to feel good about ourselves," Jane said, waving her hands in the air. "To tell the truth, having no self-esteem makes me feel special." she shrugged. "What can I say?"

"Wait, so all he wants is for us to be confident?" Ranma asked, her eyebrow twitching. "I spent an hour and a half listening to English words I couldn't understand because they think I'm not confident enough?"

"She seems upset," Daria observed.

"Is she glowing?" Jane continued. "You know, she's catching up to those abducted farmers by the minute."

"Yeah, but I prefer my weirdness obviously fake," Daria disagreed. "More of a sense of security that way." Quirking an eyebrow behind her thick rimmed glasses, she asked, "So why are you glowing?"

"I use ego as a power source for energy attacks!" Ranma shouted, shaking her fist at the sky. "I need a confidence building course like I need another fiancee!"

"Another fiancee?" Daria asked. "So, is that one E or two?"

"Huh?"

"Male or Female," Jane clarified, seeing Ranma's incomprehension.

"They'd better be female," Ranma growled, cracking her knuckles.

"Okay, so it's either male or lesbian," Jane observed, jotting a note down in a small notebook she'd pulled from her pocket.

"My money's on lesbian," Daria retorted. "I think her body'd put that cheerleader in our class to shame. Not, of course, that I care or anything and that I'm building a steady but slow acting stream of resentment that will eventually and inevitably result in a psychotic break and the shooting up of the school district."

"Huh?" This time, it was both Jane and Ranma who made this perplexed noise.

"Oh, nothing," Daria said.

"And it's male, turned into a girl 'cuz of a curse," Ranma grumbled.

"Some curse," Jane said, looking up to the sky. "Any chance I could get a little cursing over here?"

"Doesn't work if you're already what the spring would turn you into," the martial artist explained.

"Yeah, but I'm not a super-model, so it's all good," Jane said with a smirk.

Ranma's eyebrow twitched. "Why am I walking with you guys again?"

"Because you wanted to know what O'Neill was talking about," Daria reminded her.

"Yeah, that was pretty stupid, now that I think about it," Ranma grumbled. "So, what do we gotta put up with for this class?"

"Well, first there's the lectures, then there's the role playing, then they split the guys and girls into separate rooms, and..." Jane stopped for a moment, a speculative look growing on her face. "What room would she be put in, do you think?" she asked, jerking a thumb at Ranma.

"I'm a guy, damn it," the redhead grumbled.

"Shhh, not now, the adults are talking," Jane said, shaking her head.

"You know, most people would say it's a bad idea to taunt people who can glow without falling down dead from radiation poisoning," Daria observed casually.

"Yeah, but my survival instinct's always been a little rusty," Jane admitted.

"You'd fit right in back home," Ranma said, as the three turned the corner onto Daria's street.

"Hey, come to think of it, where are we going?" Jane asked, looking around.

"Home," Daria stated, matter-of-factly.

"Funny, my house looked different this morning," Jane shrugged.

"Yeah, 'n if this is my tent I've really moved up in the..." Ranma started, before her face went pale. "Crap! It's been rainin and my tent's still got a hole in the roof!"

"Well, you could try the under-pass a few blocks from the school," Daria suggested, getting a thankful nod from Ranma.

"Wait, she lives in a tent?" Jane asked, but the martial artist was already dashing away.

"You know he, or she, didn't actually give us its name," Daria commented, as Ranma leapt onto a nearby roof.

"So, Spiderman?" Jane asked, speculatively.

"Maybe one of those clones," Daria shrugged.

HR. END HERE.

The historical accuracy of Ranma's responce i confined to five minutes on Wikipedia, and is therefore probably wrong. We'll do better if we actuallly publish.


	2. MIB Fic

Here's a fic based off of the MIB animated series, for the most part. Not much happened this chapter, but it's still a pretty good idea of the tone, and we do have an idea what will happen in future.

Random Unnamed MIB Fic.

"You gotta be kidding me." a black man in a dark suit said as he sat in a hard backed plastic chair in a meeting room, scraping something vaguely offensive and green off of one shoulder. "Another mission this soon? We just got finished with the Bartulons, and I think I've still got some of that green stuff down my..."

"Button it, Ace," a taller, lighter skinned man said where he reclined next to his partner, seemingly immaculate. "What do we have, chief?"

At the front of the room, an old, rather large man with steel grey hair stood straightening his tie, before stepping to a console at the desk and pressing a button. The dark skinned guy whistled when a huge, circular crater flashed into existence on the screen, the sides showing evidence of what had once been trees. "Mount Horai,Japan," the older man said in a gravelly voice. Tapping the button again, this time it showed another mountain, this one with a decent sized chunk blown out of it, as viewed from the side. "Jusendo Mountain,China."

"So what, we got someone blowin up mountains instead of drawing crop circles?" the youngest agent in the room asked, leaning forward and giving up on his suit's shoulder as a lost cause.

"No, actually, just some rowdy neighbors that we thought we had under control until now. Either of you heard of the Juraians?"

The dark skinned man shook his head, but his partner spoke up instantly. "Powerful humanoid race, have a non-interference treaty with Earth, prince's vacationing somewhere inJapan, if I recall. They'd be a class 1 threat, but they all seem to want to carrot farm and maintain a shrine out inOkayama."

"Carrot farm?" the other asked, but was only shrugged at.

"Well, apparently they've taken to defacing parts of our geology now," the older man said, clicking another slide to reveal a dark haired man, almost entirely human. Actually, if it weren't for the huge crackling ball of blue energy, he would have passed completely as an Asian boy in his late teens. "This one in particular has been seen at the sites of both of the disturbances I showed you, and in one case, assaulted a member of thePhoenixnamed Saffron."

"The other guy all right?" the youngest agent asked.

"He died," the man at the front of the room responded, and at the other's horrified look, he shrugged. "Happens all the time, don't worry about it."

"So we're supposed to catch this guy, right Zed?" the dark skinned man asked, pumping his fist.

"You're supposed to go to the Juraian's home and question him, check his permits, that sort of thing," the older man, now identified as Zed, informed, giving his top agents a half-lidded stare. He knew that things tended to blow up when they got involved, but he really didn't want to send anyone else into an alien infested warzone likeJapan.

"All right K, we can do that, right?" the green goop covered agent said, standing quickly.

"Calm down Slick, we'll do some research first, let's go." K said, standing as well.

"Sounds cool, I need to change my shirt anyhow," Slick said, as the door swung closed behind the two and Zed slumped down in his desk.

"Now, I wait for stuff to blow up," the old man said, and then looked over to the coffee maker that was perched in the corner of the room, intent on having a cup. When he saw that it was empty, the bellow of "WORMS?" could be heard half way through the MIB'sNew Yorkcomplex.

HR.

A brown haired woman hummed merrily to herself as she swept the front walk of her family's home. It was, she decided, a beautiful day. The birds were singing, the sun was shining, and Ranma was falling through the air on a ballistic arc that had apparently started in Happosai's room. This was a rather normal part of Kasumi Tendo's life, and she added one more item to her checklist of chores, as the roof above the old master's bedroom was probably shattered.

Most people would get annoyed over having to repair roofs as part of their weekly regime, but Kasumi, as a proud member of the Tendo Branch of Indiscriminate Housewifery, founded by her mother, welcomed the challenges as Ranma did eight foot tall tentacle monsters with bull horns. For a moment, she pondered testing out a new method of driving nails into wood with her bare hands, before a man clearing his throat distracted her from her thoughts.

When she looked up, Kasumi saw two foreign men, both wearing identical dark suits with white dress-shirts. "Can I help you?" she asked, bowing politely and wishing that she'd remembered to close the front gate. She supposed that the Americans couldn't be blamed for not waiting in front of an open gate.

"Hello, I'm agent Kimura, and this is agent Jiro, Department of Culture, Division 6," one of the men said, taking a badge out of his jacket and showing it quickly. "We're looking for Ranma Saotome."

"Oh, Ranma-kun's not here right now," the oldest Tendo said, looking at the men quizzically. "You wouldn't happen to be engaged, or have any relatives who are engaged to him, would you?"

The two men exchanged glances, before the younger said "No, we just need to talk to him about some paperwork he needs to file with us, that's all."

Kasumi wanted to ask what on earth Ranma could want with the Department of Culture, but knew that it wouldn't be good for a polite host to do. "He should be back soon, why don't you come in for tea?" She offered.

Both men nodded and stepped into the house, studying everything about the place as the young girl lead them into the main room. "Is that..." one of them asked, pointing shakily at Mr. Saotome, who was playing Shogi with Mr. Tendo.

"What are you looking at?" the panda said, by way of a sign it pulled out of nowhere.

"Oh, that's just Mr. Saotome, Ranma's father," Kasumi said cheerfully. "These men are here to see Ranma, Saotome-san."

Genma slowly nodded, then, as he took in the dark suited forms, so obviously government agents that even he got it, his eyes bulged. "Gotta go, Soun ol' buddy!" was quickly scribbled on a sign, which was dropped to the game board as the animal scampered out the porch door and over the compound wall.

This apparently got a reaction, as agent Kimura was standing with a small, shiny looking pistol drawn, but hadn't had a chance to fire. Seeing the weapon, Soun's eyes narrowed. "Put that away, sir," he said, in a much more stern voice than was usual for him.

The dark clad man reluctantly obliged, slipping the gun below his jacket, and the strained atmosphere was broken as Nabiki sauntered into the room from the hall. Her eyebrow rose as she saw the two agents, but she didn't say anything as she moved over to the low table, sitting there and waiting with her arms crossed for what was about to happen.

After a few minutes of silence, which Kasumi used to bring in the tea, Nabiki finally spoke. "All right, which Saotome did what?" she asked, pulling a small notebook from apparently nowhere.

"No one has done anything," Agent Kimura said, quickly.

"Yeah, we're just here to talk to this Ranma guy," Jiro continued.

"All right, so it's Ranma. FBI, CIA, NSA, JSDF, MI5, NERV, Interpole or KGB?" the middle Tendo continued, looking down a list. "Hmm, he's black, so probably not..." She crossed several things off of her paper.

Both agents looked at each other again. "This happen often?" Jiro finally decided to ask.

"We haven't had Men in Black show up yet, but similar, yes." Nabiki said, getting a noticeable flinch from both men. "So, what? Did he accidentally hit one of your secret bases when he was fighting Ryoga?"

"You ask a lot of questions," Kimura observed, deadpan.

"It pays well," Nabiki replied, before getting a look from Kasumi. The two sisters stared into each-other's eyes for a moment, before the former finally looked away. "I'll just let the idiot deal with it," she decided.

Just as she said that, the front door opened and the sound of footsteps could be heard tromping through it. "Look, I told you he attacked me!" arather irritated female voice said.

"And that's why you were beating him up so badly," another said. "He was down and you kept on punching."

"Akane, it's Ryoga, he didn't even feel most of..." The first voice trailed off as the two girls entered the house's main room to see the guests. One of them, with dark blue-black hair looked slightly embarrassed, while the other, a short redhead fell into a stance in front of the first, her actions obviously defensive.

"All right, what's goin on here?" the redhead demanded, her eyes flickering from one person to the next, noting with relief that both Nabiki and Kasumi seemed relaxed.

"These had better not be more fiances," the blue-black haired girl said, tossing a glance over to the Shogi board, but finding no panda there to glare at.

"I broke all the old man's bones... twice... last time he engaged me to a guy, doubt he's that stupid this time," the redhead said, casually.

"Ranma, Akane, these are agents Kimura and Jiro of the Department of Culture, they're here to speak to you, Ranma-kun," Kasumi interrupted smoothly, giving both her sister and the younger girl's fiance very slightly disapproving looks.

"Wait, I thought this Ranma was a guy," Jiro said, blinking in confusion.

"I am, just a sec," Ranma said, hoping that the curse would maybe scare these two suited goons off, if they wanted something to do with her father. "Kasumi, ya mind?" she asked, gesturing to the tea pot in the middle of the table.

The eldest Tendo nodded obligingly, and the young martial artist scooped up the pot, dumping it over her head. As she shot up in height, red hair was replaced by black, and soft curves gave way to well-defined muscle, both of the guests had different reactions.

"Oh man," Jiro said, looking slightly green, as he sat down on the opposite side of the low table from a smirking Nabiki. "Nothin about this job should bother me, but it does..."

"Definitely not Juraiyan," Kimura muttered to himself, scratching his chin. Looking around, he decided that these people had already been exposed to alien culture, and doing a little more exposition before he called in a clean-up team really wouldn't hurt them. "Ranma Saotome, on behalf of the Men in Black, Earth's extra-terrestrial policing agency, I and my partner are here to bring you in for questioning in regards to several unexplained breaches of secrecy protocol, as well as your lack of registration. You will come with us immediately."

"Extra-terrestrial?" Akane asked, blinking slowly.

Nearby, Nabiki was gaping like a fish out of water. "A... aliens?" she stuttered, shocked. "Saotome, what's this about you being an alien?"

"That's a joke, right?" Ranma asked, after taking several seconds to process what he'd just been told. "I know my ol' man's a real piece o' work, but it'd really surprise me if he were a tentacle monster, and I'm damned sure I'm human. Then again, Mom is kinda weird."

"Maybe he's another Earth born whose parents forgot to tell him?" Jiro offered.

"Possible, I suppose," Kimura mumbled, and pulled a small computer out of his pocket. "We could run a search on anyone who could have..." He shook his head. "Regardless, you have breached secrecy, and there's a lot of paperwork we need you to fill out."

Ranma paused and thought for a moment. This was a rarity for him, but then, all he could see in the way of weapons on the two were shoulder holsters under their jackets, so he didn't feel too threatened. "Lemme guess, I don't do this and you guys start blowin stuff up?"

"We would be required to use as much force as necessary, yes," Kimura confirmed.

"Well, I ain't an alien, what happens when we go and ya find that out?" Ranma countered.

"We let you leave," Kimura returned reassuringly, and as his partner was about to speak up, he shot him a warning glance. "We have no desire to hurt or inconvenience humans."

"Fine, so long as this ain't gunna take too long, I'll go," Ranma grumbled. If these guys had been martial artists, he would have put up a fight, but it was generally not a good idea to screw with government agencies, especially if you were in one place for a long period of time.

"Jiro, take him out to the car, I'll handle things here," Kimura ordered, as Akane and Soun both burst out of their shocked states at what had just been said.

"Ranma, wait!" Akane said, catching the martial artist at the door, and the two started talking quietly.

Soun wasn't nearly as subdued, bursting into tears for a moment before recomposing himself. "You will not take my son-in-law away to wherever you are going!" he boomed.

"Mr. Tendo, are you aware of the average viability rate of human-alien offspring?" Kimura said, deadpan. "Also, have you heard of an animal called a liger?"

Mr. Tendo looked confused, but then Nabiki started to snicker. "Wait, you mean Saotome could be.." she started, and then burst into laughter. She didn't really believe this alien thing, it was sort of like the time last month when a prince from Uzbecastan had come claiming that Ranma was his long lost lady love, but the concept that everyone in Nerima had been wasting their time to acquire a dud was too priceless not to laugh at. She looked at her father, who had a dark look on his face, and composed herself. "He means that, due to genetic incompatibilities, if Ranma IS half human, or even if he's a full alien and manages to have children, there would be sterility within a generation."

"What?" Soun asked, blinking.

"Sterility means you can't have children, daddy," Kasumi chipped in, before picking up the tea service and walking into the kitchen.

Soun processed this for a moment, and then started crying his eyes out. Kimura was honestly surprised that one person could produce so many tears. When Akane came back into the room, her eyes downcast slightly, the black clad man cleared his throat, took out a pair of sun glasses and put them on before removing a ball point pen from his pocket.

He fiddled around with the pen for a moment, as Nabiki peered closely at it, before it made several soft beeping noises and flashed brightly. "Ranma has gone on a student exchange trip to the United States. He also has a chance at a job offer there."

"Oh, how nice," Kasumi said, from the kitchen door. "I hope he enjoys his trip."

Agent K slipped his neuralizer back into his pocket, a little disconcerted that the oldest Tendo had recovered from the device's trance so quickly, but shrugged it off. If it hadn't taken, the clean-up crews would get her later.

HR.

"So, saw ya whispering to your girlfriend, she's pretty cute," Agent J commented off-hand, as he sat in the front seat of a large black car, Ranma slumped casually in the back.

"Just don't try 'n kidnap her, and we'll get along fine," the Japanese youth commented, as he gazed out the window.

"That happen a lot?" the American asked, a little bemused by his current charge's behavior. To tell the truth, he'd been absolutely positive that something was going to go wrong with this mission. Things had seemed way too easily wrapped up. That was, of course, when the car rocked, and an enraged face appeared at the rear window.

"You'd be surprised," Ranma returned, before turning to the window and sighing. "Aw, crap," he muttered, as he saw the face of Ryoga Hibiki, his mouth contorted with rage and showing one fang. He was bellowing something, but apparently the car's materials kept sound out unusually well, because the young martial artist couldn't hear any of it. "I should probably get out 'n deal with the pig," he grumbled.

"Oh no, you're stayin right here," Jay objected, opening the passenger door and stepping out. "Yo, you, stop scratching the paint!"

Ryoga turned towards him, and he only belatedly noticed that there was a dent in the supposedly ultra-tough alloy of the car door where the younger man had apparently used an umbrella to try and smash it in. "Ranma, you coward, get out here and fight me like a man!" the lost boy bellowed, banging on the door with his fists this time. Ranma said something, and Jay caught something about idiotic pigs, but felt that it would be a bad idea to relay that comment.

"Sorry, but you ain't gunna get to play with your friend right now, we need him," the black clad agent said, vaguely wondering how big an assault force MIB headquarters was going to have to muster when they finally took in every alien in this region. Ryoga didn't respond, only picking up his umbrella again and preparing to bash the car. Ranma was also moving, and the last thing Jay needed was for the two of them to start to fight right now. "Sorry, pal," he said, drawing the Noisy Cricket, and dialing the silencer open to a wider shot. Pulling the trigger, he barely managed to keep himself from flying backwards by anchoring to the car with one hand, but his opponent wasn't so lucky, as he was picked up, launched straight over the Tendo Compound's wall.

Seconds later, a tremendous splash was heard, and K exited the compound, his uniform's shirt dripping, and a small black pig in his hand. "This yours, slick?" he asked, and Jay could have sworn that one eyebrow was twitching.

In the car, Ranma was shaking his head, unsure whether to laugh or feel worried for Ryoga. When the two agents entered the car, and settled the drenched and unconscious pig in between the seats, he settled on being a little worried. "You ain't gunna hurt Ryoga for damaging this thing, are ya?" the martial artist asked.

"Don't worry, the only one I'd kill for scratching the paint is slick here," K said, as the group started out of the Nerima district.

HR.


	3. Define Success FMA

A really, really wierd Full Metal Alchemist fic based off of the first Anime.

Define Success.

By Jonabee.

Prologue, Truth hurts.

"I don't know about this, Brother," Alphonse Elric said worriedly, as he looked over the alchemic circle that he sat next to, his eyes resting for just a moment on the pile of elemental dust in the center, the lock of brown hair sitting atop it.

"Al, we can't back out of this now," the brown haired boy's older brother, who was crouched next to him, said while shaking his head. "We've gotten this far, we've got to finish it."

The younger sibling gulped, but nodded, and the two brought their hands down on the edge of the circle, blue and gold energy beginning to crackle along its edges, as a sense of overwhelming power seemed to suffuse the room. That, of course, was when it all went wrong.

HR.

"Come on, please," Ranma Saotome begged, as she sat in the cold pool of water, one of many scattered around the crater that had once been the top of Jusendo mountain. On the ground before her, Akane Tendo refused to move, no matter what she said or did, and her heart was currently racing much more quickly than it had during the battle with Saffron.

"C'mon, ya stupid tomboy," She growled, holding a hand in front of the other's mouth to see if there was any breath there, and getting no response. Leaning forward, she started doing the rapid compressions and breathing that characterized cardiopulmonary resuscitation, mumbling to herself as she came up for air.

Finally, in desperation after the fifth cycle with no response, the pigtailed martial artist just concentrated raw life energy into her hands, shoving it directly into her fiancee's chest. That was when she finally got a response. Akane's eyes shot open, and the redhead was about to smile in joy, when her body disintegrated.

Of course, she had no idea that her body had just vanished in a sparkling stream of red right in front of Akane's freshly open eyes. All she could tell was that the world was sparkling brightly enough around her that she wanted to squint. She did so, just as she saw... something... with far too many eyes flash past her, and abruptly fell forward into a room that was full of foul smelling smoke.

She tried to shake her head clear and stand, since smoke was usually a good cue to get the hell out of dodge, but as she came to her feet and tried to step forward, she overbalanced and stumbled, catching herself on her hands, and staring down at what looked like the stump of a dismembered limb. Her eyes widening, she looked up the body to see a young boy frantically drawing something on a piece of steel with what looked like his own blood.

The kid was drawing a pentagram, which meant magic, and that Ranma decided to step back and stay out of his way while he did it. Still, his freshly cut off leg would likely need attention, and whatever had done it could still be around, so she began looking over the room they were currently in for threats and medical supplies.

There appeared to be a set of clothes that could be used as makeshift bandages nearby, though the closest thing she could see to a threat was a half suit of armor that was hanging in the corner. As she was about to turn back to the injured mage, the martial artist heard a clatter, and then a young boy's voice, sounding panicked and speaking a language that sounded vaguely familiar, but completely impossible to understand.

Ranma blinked as she saw that the blond's injuries had now extended to an apparently completely missing arm, and the suit of armor in front of him was sitting up and looking around. The boy and the other voice, which was apparently coming from the armor, exchanged a few words before he fell forward and ceased to move. This had a profound effect on the armor, which sprang to its feet, looking around frantically until a strange set of red eyes within the helmet settled on Ranma. It quickly gestured to the blond boy, sounding panicked, and the martial artist nodded.

She'd apparently woken up in some sort of sorcerer's laboratory, but there was still a kid bleeding to death on the floor, and she was a martial artist. Rapidly gathering the clothes she'd spotted earlier, she started tearing them up and making pressure bandages and a tourniquet. Granted, she had never had to deal with actual severed limbs, and she'd probably be horrified later, but her old man had drilled basic first aid into her head so hard she practically did it on auto-pilot. Finding no other injuries on the boy, she picked him up in a fireman's carry. "Any idea where the nearest hospital is?" she asked, and the suit of armor just looked at her, dumbly. "Right, ya can't understand, can you?" she grumbled.

Deciding that if it was good enough for the kid, it was good enough for her, she dipped a finger in some of the blood on the floor, supporting her cargo in one arm, and drew a red cross. The armor seemed to get it, or at least get something, as it charged out of the room, Ranma following.

HR.

Winry Rockbell hummed to herself as she turned a small metallic item over and over in her hand. Her grandmother had told her that there was something wrong with the elbow joint, and she could try and fix it if she'd like. As far as she could tell, it was working fine, but she wasn't very good at tracing the nervous connections, so she thought that the problem probably lay there.

As she worked, the older woman stared out a nearby window, looking disturbed. The blonde was about to put down the joint and ask what was wrong, when the front door burst open, revealing two figures silhouetted against the rain outside. One was a large, bulky looking man in a suit of armor, while the other was a woman the girl recognized. As the item she'd been working with fell from nerveless fingers, she stuttered "Mrs. Elric?"

Her grandmother had a much more violent reaction, as she grabbed a broom off of the wall, brandishing it as though she could do real damage with it. "Whatever you are, get out of my house!" she barked, angrily.

"Aunt Pinako, please help," the armored figure said, in a voice that sounded like Al's, as Mrs. Elric walked into the house, and the bloody form of Ed became visible in her arms.

"Oh my god..." the old woman gasped, turning to Winry. "Get our medical supplies out of the work room." Winry just stood there, her mouth wide. "Do it, now!" At this abrupt shout, she ran for a door at the side of the main room.

"You," the old woman obviously seemed disconcerted at speaking to the nude brown haired woman who held Ed, bring him and follow me." Seeing nothing but a blank look on the other's face, and hearing her say something that sounded mostly like gibberish, the grey haired woman scowled, pointing a finger to Ed, and then to herself, before marching off, the younger woman following her.

As everybody left the room, Al looked around, confused for a few minutes, before sagging to a seat next to the door and staring down at his hands, trying to comprehend exactly what was going on.

HR.

Ranma frowned in concentration as she helped properly wrap the wounds of the blond boy, listening carefully to the constant stream of muttering the old woman next to her was giving off. The familiarity of the language had only grown stronger when she'd been able to hear it from someone who wasn't panicking and terrified, and it was starting to make sense as a sort of English, though all of the inflections were slightly off, almost as though she were listening to someone from one end of China while knowing a dialect from the other.

Shrugging, she decided to try something. "He all right?" she asked, trying to mangle her own not terribly good English to fit.

The old woman looked up at her sharply. "So, it speaks," she said, irritably. "I can't see why something like you would help, or even care."

"Duty," Ranma said, irritable herself, and this actually got a chuckle out of the other woman.

"So, they managed to make a servant rather than something that would curl up and die or try to rip their throats out, and it only cost Edward an arm and a leg," the old woman shook her head. "Not to mention what happened to poor Alphonse."

Ranma couldn't follow much of that last statement other than two obvious names, one apparently for the boy in the bed, and the other probably for the living suit of armor outside. She shrugged, and the two finished their work in silence, until a rather loud and obvious noise of clanking metal was heard outside of the room, and Al squeezed his massive bulk through the door.

"Is Ed alright?" he asked, noting that his brother's wounds had all been properly dressed.

"He'll survive, if that's what you mean," Winry's grandmother replied, and the suit of armor seemed to sigh in relief, before it turned slightly, facing Ranma.

"Mom!" he cried, lunging across the room and hugging her. The old grey haired woman winced, catching herself feeling sorry for whatever had been created as the young boy's now armored arms closed around it in a bear hug.

There was a staccato stream of words in a language neither of them could understand before she pushed Al away, looking confused. "Why hug?" she asked, blinking.

"M... mom?" Al stuttered. "It worked, Ed and I brought you back; I know I look different, but it's me, Al, you remember, right?"

"That isn't your mother," Winry's grandmother said, as gently as she could.

"Of course it is!" Al objected, and the old woman briefly wondered if antagonizing the seven foot, spiked person was a good idea.

"No, no one's mother," the brown haired woman agreed, with an obvious sense of disgust. As the animated armor looked at her, she could have sworn that it looked like it was going to start crying.

"I... don't understand, didn't we do it right?" Al asked, confused. "Maybe she just doesn't remember, that's got to be it!"

Ranma was about to speak, when the bedroom door abruptly opened again, almost hitting Al in the back, and a man in an obvious military uniform strode in, Winry following behind, apparently trying to stop him. "Well, that explains a few things, a human transmutation," he said, looking around the room. His eyes lit on Winry's grandmother, then Ed, where he nodded with approval, and then on Ranma, where they stayed for a very long time. His mouth then split into a happy smile, and he fell backwards, hitting the floor with a thud.

"What's his problem?" Ranma asked, before she noticed a trickle of blood coming from the man's nose, and looked down to realize that she was completely naked. The next word she said was in the language that no one else there understood, but Winry's grandmother knew a swear when she heard one, and couldn't help but chuckle. As the nude brunette walked over to the military man and took his jacket, the chuckle turned into a laugh.

HR.

"I've heard of people taking the shirt off your back before, but that was ridiculous," Roy Mustang shivered, as he walked down the path away from the Rockbell house. Still, the view had been pretty nice. Smacking himself on the side of the head, he brought his thoughts back to the matter at hand.

Whatever the view had been like, the woman who'd taken his coat had been a result of a human transmutation, and apparently an unprecedented success in the field, even if they'd gotten back the wrong soul. He contemplated what he was going to say when he got back to Central. He'd already extended his invitation for the Elric brothers to come, and was relatively sure Ed would accept, at the least.

As for their 'friend,' he shrugged. It would probably be a shame to see someone that pretty get cut up on a table somewhere, and he had no illusions about what would happen if some of his commanders got hold of a successful human subject. Turning back to the house, he smirked. "Just call it and the coat payment for the free show," he muttered, right before he sneezed. "Damn, it's cold out here."

HR.

She stood in a small bathroom, looking in a mirror. The fact that the reflection wasn't familiar wasn't really all that startling, as she'd felt off balance ever since appearing in that sorcerer's lab or whatever. Besides, she'd gotten used to that after the first few weeks of the Jusenkyo curse. Actually, other than the fact that it looked about ten years older, this body had several advantages over her cursed form, including the fact that it wasn't less than five feet tall.

Of course, that wasn't why she was here, staring into the mirror and trying not to look at the sink. Over the last five minutes, she'd been psyching herself up not to scream if it turned out that hot water didn't work. That girl she'd seen bringing medical supplies had looked like she'd seen a ghost, and her grandmother looked like the type to start throwing things if she got startled, so screaming like an idiot wasn't a good idea.

Slowly, reluctantly, she reached out for the tap, turning it and waiting for the metal of the spout to heat up slightly before putting her hand under... and starting to scream. When the pain, rather a lot like that felt after a day when everyone decided to beat the crap out of him, subsided, Ranma raised his head to stare into his own eyes in the mirror. "Let's hope it doesn't hurt that much next time," he muttered sourly. He briefly pondered putting off that test for a while, until he heard someone banging on the bathroom door.

"Um, Mrs. Elric, are you... are you all right in there?" Winry asked, nervously. Ranma sighed, turning the cold water tap and pushing his hand under. As she wasn't distracted by pain this time, she watched as a sort of aura of black lightning swept over her body, replacing his with hers in a single flicker, rather than the smooth shift that Jusenkyo usually used.

"Great, it's acting weird," Ranma grumbled, before hearing Winry fidgeting nervously on the other side of the door. "Fine," she called back shortly, followed by, "Not Elric."

"...right," Winry said, sighing in relief that she didn't have to see the rather creepy older woman and turning to head back and see if Ed was alright.

HR.

They sat uncomfortably around the Rockbells' kitchen table, Ranma looking at Ed and Al, who were looking back. Ed had just woken up a few hours earlier, and Winry's grandmother had tried to keep him down, but he'd insisted that he had to speak to his brother, and after he found out that Ranma was here, his determination had grown even more. "So, you're not her," he said, looking at the woman who sat across the table, looking exactly as they'd seen her before her death, with the exception of the military coat she wore buttoned up to the neck rather than her house dress.

"No, I'm not," Ranma replied, sighing. "You want to tell me who she is, why you think I'm her, and why I'm here?" This was the most verbose thing she'd said yet, and she hoped she'd gotten the accent down, but she really didn't want to spend the whole time sounding like Shampoo; it was impossible to be taken seriously like that.

Al started, saying "She's our mother," before Ed raised his one remaining hand.

"Not so fast, Al. If you're not her, who are you, and how'd you get here?"

"I'm Ranma Saotome, I'm a..." she searched for a moment, before deciding on "fighter. I was trying to save Akane and then I was in that room with you and your brother."

"Yeah, well we definitely missed our target, then," Ed said, his head slumping forward onto the table. "Damn it..."

Seeing his brother didn't want to talk, Al told Ranma the rest of their story. It seemed weird, trying to use magic to bring someone back from the dead, even if Ed had stopped staring at the table top to yell that it wasn't magic when Ranma had made the observation. Seemed like something that would happen in a bad horror story, rip you apart, then summon some horrific monster to eat your soul... or a really confused martial artist with a gender curse, apparently.

She contemplated asking if the boys had any way of sending her back home, but given that Al had started staring at his hands shortly after he was done, and Ed was still laying with his one hand supporting his head, she highly doubted it. "So," she finally said, "what are you going to do now?"

"I've got no idea," Ed admitted. "Aunt Pinako's not going to be happy, but I'm probably going to take that guy who showed up last night up on his offer." He recalled what she'd had to say about that, shortly after he'd woken this morning, and winced. "We've got to stay here for a while, though, since I've got to get fitted for automail."

"You're going to try and find a way to bring your mother back again?" Ranma asked, looking worried.

Ed shook his head. "No, just to fix this," he gestured to where Al sat.

Ranma nodded. "Then I'll come with you," she decided. "I've got to find a way back, and with what I got told about how stupid Human Trans... whatsit is, you'll probably end up losing your other arm if I don't come with you."

"I liked you more when you could barely talk," Ed grumbled, glaring at the being that wore his mother's face. She just shrugged.

HR.

Al winced as he heard his brother yell in pain, and took several steps closer to the workshop door. As the slightly older boy screamed again, and there was a crashing sound, he moved closer still, but was stopped just as he reached for the door handle by a strong hand on his wrist. "I wouldn't go in there if I were you."

The younger Elric brother turned, and flinched before shaking his head. "I wish you didn't look like that," he said, honestly, as he looked down at Ranma who was now wearing a pair of Winry's overalls and an oversized shirt.

"There's a way I wouldn't, but I figure I'll tell you about it after we get away from the crazy old woman," Ranma smiled. "You really shouldn't go inside, though. Interrupting operations can make them last longer, or even put the patient in danger."

"Yeah, I guess," Al said, but he cast a doubtful look back at the door.

Ranma frowned at him for a moment, and then smiled. "Come on, hanging around here and listening to that's not healthy, and you can't do anything either way."

Al had to admit that the other was right, but he was confused as she lead him down the hall and out the front door into the front yard. "Why are we out here?" the animate armor finally asked, looking around.

"It's the best way I've got of passing time," Ranma explained. "I've noticed you stomping around. You broke a couple of pictures yesterday, right?" Al didn't respond, but just for a moment, the brown haired woman could have sworn that she somehow saw a blush on his cheeks. "I'm going to show you some coordination building stuff."

As the martial artist fell into a fighting stance, Al stepped back. "Y... you want me to fight you?" he asked, nervously.

"Don't worry, I'll go easy on you," Ranma replied, a smirk crossing her face that Al had definitely never seen on it before.

"That's not what I..." he started, but was stopped as a flying kick came straight for his head. Yipping like a startled puppy, he fell backwards, letting Ranma sail over him. Unfortunately, she didn't really want to do that, and managed to pivot in mid-air to bring a punch almost into his face. "That's impossible!" he exclaimed, surprised.

"And who's the walking suit of armor here, again?" Ranma replied, having somersaulted back to an upright position, with her arms crossed over her chest. "Okay, maybe starting off with a spar was a bad idea. I'll show you some basic moves first."

"Do I have a say in this?" Al asked, as he hauled himself off of the ground.

"Nope," Ranma said, matter-of-factly.

HR.

"Hold still!"

"Why would I ever do something stupid like that?"

"Grahhh!"

"They've been at this all afternoon?" Edward Elric asked, as he sat in a wheel chair, his new automail leg propped on a footrest before him, at the Rockbells' front door.

"Yep," Winry said, where she stood holding the handles at the back of the chair. "Al refused to fight at first, but she's really good at taunting."

"Taking his head probably helped, too," Ed observed, as the headless suit of armor lunged at its opponent, and Ranma tossed the helmet into the air, sliding under the lunge and catching it.

"You're getting better at that!" she called in approval, as she tossed the piece of metal back to Al.

"That wasn't fair," he pouted, irritably. It was rather disconcerting, as armor had no right to emote like that.

"Don't worry, your brother'll help you beat me next time," Ranma smiled, and Al gasped, or... simulated a gasp, or something, as he turned back to the house and saw Ed looking at him with an odd expression.

"Brother, you're all right!" he called, charging towards the older boy's chair. Winry, perhaps unwilling to get run down, quickly pulled herself and Ed to the side, and Al slowed down in front of them, bending down and peering interestedly at the blond boy's shoulder. "So this is your new arm, huh?"

"Yup, and it didn't hurt nearly as much as Aunt Pinako said it would, either," he said with a confident smirk.

"So that screaming was all our imagination, huh?" Ranma asked, walking up behind Al.

"Yeah, definitely liked you better when you couldn't talk," Ed grumbled, as the others laughed.

HR.

"I can't believe you did that," Ranma grumbled, as she, Ed and Al walked along a path that lead away from the little village the two boys had grown up in, and the martial artist held several books in her arms.

"I don't know why you were so upset," the older Elric brother responded. "It was our house, and we did it for a good reason."

"With a library full of Alchemy books inside," Ranma shot back. "When it was Alchemy that got us into this mess, maybe keeping the research material intact would be a good idea."

Ed stopped, blinked, and slapped his forehead, accidentally using his automail arm and almost giving himself a concussion. When his eyes had cleared of spots, he cursed. "Damn it, you could have told me!"

Ranma rolled her eyes. "And this guy's going to become a State Alchemist," she whispered to Al, who did his best to restrain a snicker.

Ed just grumbled incoherently as a building became visible in the distance, small curls of smoke from the trains resting in the station visible on the horizon. "Let's just go, all right?"

Both of the other two nodded, proceeding towards the station.


	4. YaKasumi

YaKasumi.

Prologue.

Kasumi Tendo was crying. This didn't, as one would expect, bring the entire Tendo household, plus guests, charging in to find and destroy what had caused this event, as the rest of the Tendos were a little too busy doing crying of their own at the moment, and one of their house guests was tossing cats into a freshly dug pit, in preparation for throwing the other into it. The astute reader would now realize that Ranma hasn't arrived at the Tendo Dojo yet, and Kasumi Tendo was approximately nine years old, as she huddled on a bench in the park, her shoulders shaking with tears.

The girl didn't even notice as an older man settled down on the other end of her bench, producing a bag full of bread scraps and beginning to spread them on the grass before him for the birds. Sighing, he dropped his bread bag to the ground and looked across at the brown haired girl. "What's wrong with you?" he asked, bluntly.

"Hmm?" Kasumi asked, looking up from her crossed arms, rather startled by the question.

"I said, what's the matter with you?" the old man repeated, sounding irritable. "You sit crying in a public park? What are you, an idiot? You've got 'target' painted all over you."

The brunette rubbed one hand to clear her eyes, so that she could get a better look at the other. She noted that he had short, neatly cropped black hair, and his face had several jagged looking scars running across one side. In addition, he wore a dark suit with one arm rolled up just enough to show a tattoo of a snake biting its own tail. "Um..." she said, nervously, sliding slightly backwards on the bench.

"Oh, so you were content to huddle there and stare at your own arms before, but now you see me, you're afraid?" the large man asked, rolling his eyes. "Seriously, kid, what's wrong. I want to know."

"N... nothing," Kasumi stuttered, looking away. She knew that things weren't doing very well, ever since her mother had died, her father had fallen pretty well to pieces, and she'd heard someone from the bank talking about taking the Dojo, but she was pretty sure that she didn't want to talk about it with some random person she met in the park.

"Nothing, huh?" the large man asked, leaning back against the bench and grunting slightly as he cracked something. "Must be an awful lot of it. Last time I cried over nothing this much it was 'cuz I had to shoot my favorite dog."

"You shot a dog?" Kasumi asked, actually somewhat horrified.

"He'd gone nuts," the man shrugged. "Only thing I could do. Make 'im die with some dignity, rather than after he'd done something stupid. It's always important, having dignity..." He trailed off, shaking his head. "Got off topic, there. But you going to tell me about your nothing, or what?"

Kasumi shook her head, though the man's words did run around in her mind for a moment. One thing she was sure of was that her father was nowhere near dignified, though her mother had been, at the least. She'd made the mistake, over the last year, of looking up the medical facts of the illness that had taken the Tendo matriarch and, though she hadn't understood all of the medical particulars, knew that it was extraordinarily painful. "She just smiled," she muttered, confused.

"Hmm?" the old man asked, curiously. Kasumi shook her head and stood, walking away. "Hey, so what, you're not gunna tell me now?" he asked. "Feh, kids. I'll never understand them."

Grunting, he scooped up his bread bag, stood and started ambling down a path towards the opposite edge of the park. Seeing a small, grey car, he walked up and opened the back door.

"Did you have an interesting walk, sir?" the driver asked, adjusting his mirror several times, carefully.

"There was no walk," the old man replied, evenly.

"Of course, sir," the driver said, before the black haired man slammed his door, and the car moved away from the curb.

HR.

"B... but sir, I'm begging you, please reconsider!" a short, rather weaselly looking man stuttered, nervously.

"The boy is NOT a demon of annoyance, and we are NOT paid to deal with him," the man Kasumi had met before snarled. "I don't care how much bad Shakespeare he quotes, if you can't get him to leave, that is your problem." He shrugged, gesturing over to a corner, where a seven year old boy was standing on a table, waving a dessert spoon around. "Besides, I hear he's rich. Just overcharge him and it'll make up for anyone he drives away."

"But I..." the ice cream shop owner stuttered, his expression locked somewhere between panic and outrage.

"Not our problem," the large man said, his words clipped off in obvious irritation. "If you call us in over this one more time, our protection is cut off, and you wouldn't want that to happen, would you?"

"N... n... no, sir. It won't happen again, sir," the weaselly man stuttered, going pale. The last time he'd seen a place that these guys had withdrawn protection from, it'd ended up a parking lot.

"Good," the large man said, nodding and turning to leave the building, two suited men following him out. As he looked back at some particularly violent wrenching of Hamlet into a reason for providing more ice cream, he felt something bump into his side, and there was a clattering noise.

Looking back the way he was going, he saw a brown haired girl who he recognized sprawled out on the ground, a grocery basket laying sideways next to her and what looked like several apples rolling into the street. "Yoshi, Toji, pick those up," he barked, and the two men behind him nodded, walking past him and starting to collect the spilled foodstuffs without a comment.

"You all right, kid?" the old man asked, looking down at Kasumi and offering her a hand up.

"I'm fine, thank you," Kasumi said, bowing slightly after she'd gotten her feet under her. When the two men who had gone to collect her food came back, revealing that the piece of pork on the top of the pile had apparently either been stepped on or driven over, she grimaced down at it.

"Huh, that's no good for eating," the old man said, grabbing the meat off of the top of the pile in the basket and tossing it into a nearby garbage can. "Here." Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a five thousand yen bill and handed it to her.

"I really can't take this," the girl said, shaking her head and trying to give it back.

"To hell you can't. It's easy, see, you already have," the older man said, turning and walking off.

"But..." Kasumi said, considering taking off after him, but her groceries were still in the basket at her feet. Sighing and vowing that she'd find a way to pay the man back, she scooped up her basket and headed back to the butcher's shop.

HR.

"This again, huh?" the old man sighed, as he slumped down on one end of a bench, setting the cane his doctor had recently ordered him to start using to one side. "So, we going to go through the whole shtick where you don't tell me what's wrong and act all mysterious again?"

"How did you get over shooting your dog?" Kasumi asked, quietly, causing the man's eyebrow to lift.

"Lots of booze, mostly," he admitted. "Not a good idea for kids your age, though. I hear it shoots the liver straight to hell."

"Oh," Kasumi muttered, knowing that she had the key to her father's Sake stash, but doubting it was a good idea.

"So, you are going to be all closed lipped again, huh?" the old man asked, leaning back and staring up at the sky. "I'm guessing this is worse than what happened with my dog, or at least you think it is."

"Of course it is!" Kasumi shouted, before clamping her mouth closed and looking away. "Father tried to start classes in the Dojo last week, to make some extra money, but he just... he started crying in the middle of class. Everyone at school the next day, they..."

The old man had wanted to help the kid, for some reason. Heck, when he'd first seen her a week before, his first inclination was to ignore her and let her sort out her own problems. The Kami knew that he sucked at solving personal issues. Still, he wasn't expecting her to lunge at him, and he was half way through reaching for a concealed knife in one sleeve when she clamped herself around his middle and started crying.

"H... hey now," he stuttered, uncomfortably. "Now calm down, it's gunna be okay, it's not like somebody died, or some..." abruptly, she began sobbing harder. "Oh hell, somebody died. Well damn it..."

His eyes shooting around the park, the old man noticed that no one was nearby, and cursed the intimidating appearance he usually relied upon. At the moment he'd do anything to have some random housewife show up and start comforting the kid, but no one was going to, so sighing, he scooped her up into his lap and began cradling her. "Hey, it's okay, all right? Just calm down..."

HR.

"That was interesting," the man in the front seat of the old man's car said, as his employer climbed in the back.

"Shut up, Yoshi," the old man snapped back, dabbing his suit jacket where Kasumi's tears had soaked it.

"Yet another walk that didn't happen, sir?" Yoshi asked, a small, sardonic grin on his face.

"Shut up, Yoshi," his employer said again, glaring.

"Yes sir," Yoshi replied, adjusting his mirror a few times before starting away from the park. Honestly, he sort of wondered why he'd signed on in Nerima, other than the fact that the place was so weird he just had to. Most of the time, people in his position had to deal with covering up when their superiors accidentally blew a quarter of the group's money on drugs, or whores, or drugged whores. With the old man, he had to conceal illicit bread feeding and little girl comforting sessions. At least it was better than the group of people he flat out refused to work for, who also had to conceal things about little girls.

"Yoshi," the old man said, causing his driver's mind to rather thankfully drift away from his darker thoughts. "I want you to look up a Tendo family. Find their bank account and see if you can give it a slight injection."

"Yes, sir," Yoshi said, trying desperately to conceal a chuckle.

HR.

"We've got to stop meeting like this," the old man quipped, as he settled slowly down on the usual bench, where Kasumi was waiting with a plate of cookies. "People're going to start talking."

The eldest Tendo daughter just looked at him, blinking in confusion, and the dark suited man rolled his eyes. Kasumi was relaxing to be around precisely because she was so naive and friendly, but he still found it rather startling just how little she seemed to grasp of the real world.

"Just shut up and have a cookie," the girl responded, picking one up off of the plate and handing it to him.

He smirked. "I'm turning out to be a bad influence on you, kid," he muttered, chewing thoughtfully and then swallowing. "The guys are going to like these ones. New recipe?"

Kasumi nodded. "One from Mother's book," she replied.

"Hmm," the other nodded, before falling silent. "Well, it's a good one," he finally decided, after a few minutes. Kasumi actually frowned, having noticed the long pause. She contemplated asking what was wrong, but knew that she would likely get no answer, or even more maddening, a response of 'Young girls shouldn't know about that sort of thing.'

"Kasumi," the old man finally said. "I think I'm going to be taking off soon."

"Taking off?" the brunette asked, confused.

"Yeah, I'll be leaving the country for a while." He shrugged. "Got in a little trouble, you know. Old gambling buddies," he waved his hand. "Might not be back for a real long time."

"Oh," the eldest Tendo daughter said, kind of disappointed. "Will you write? I know you know where I live."

The old man jumped, kind of startled and wondering how she'd figured that out, but shook his head. "Nah, but I'll have Yoshi show up and visit, make sure you're doing all right."

The twelve year old flinched slightly. Yoshi was a rather intimidating man, radiating a presence similar to what her father once had, before her mother died, but without the protective element that had always reassured her. "Well, then you should take all the cookies. They've got to last you," she decided, trying to look cheerful.

"Yeah, guess I should," the old man laughed. "I'll enjoy them." Nodding, he stood and picked up the plate, heading for his car.

HR.

"You god damned vultures!" The entire table flinched back as the boss brought down his hand, shaking the china plate that sat next to his seat. "They just told me about this three weeks ago, and I can already tell that half of you found out and are trying to suck up."

"Sir, I don't know what you're..." one man started, before being pinned by the older man's steely glare.

The old man paced around the table, looking down at each of his higher ranked men one after another. Most of them looked him in the eye, but he noted at least five who turned away, refusing to face him. "Well, I want it to stop. I'm not in the ground yet, damn it."

"But sir, it is a legitimate question," the same person who had been glared at earlier piped up before he could stop himself. "One of us will have to take your place after..."

"Who said it would be one of you?" the boss demanded, raking his eyes across the room, and stopping as he noted Yoshi standing next to the door. He winced, realizing that he'd actually just excluded his real pick for leadership of the organization.

"Then who?" Yoshi actually caught himself saying, honestly curious. He didn't even really want the position of leader, but had felt it to be an almost inevitable fate ever since he'd entered the old man's inner circle. This revelation was rather surprising.

The tall man stopped for a moment, facing away from the group, before his shoulders shook a few times and he turned back. "Kasumi Tendo," he said, flatly.

Confused murmurs ran around the room, as sixteen people tried to place the name while one stared incredulously.

"You heard me, my heir is Kasumi Tendo," the man grunted. "Until she is ready for her responsibilities, Yoshi will act as a sort of... what're those called?"

"A regent, sir?" Yoshi asked, calmly, trying to keep the look of dumb shock off of his face.

"Yes, a regent," the old man barked, glaring around the room and daring anyone to disagree with him. No one did, though in most cases it was because they were too confused. Nodding decisively, he turned and marched out.

END.

This one isn't a crossover! Well, unless you count all the mob comedy movies we swiped in order to build the boss man. Also, note that the story is definately in the more comedic style, and along with Nerima being Nerima, the mobsters aren't exactly... normal, for any organized crime family anyone's ever heard of.


	5. RSM Nodoka

As it says on the tin, a Ranma and Sailor Moon crossover, heavily including Nodoka. Again, it's up here to see what you guys think of it before we work on future chapters, so don't hesitate to tell us your opinions.

Hope you enjoy the show.

RSM Nodoka.

Ranma Saotome was not a happy gender changing martial artist. It wasn't for the descriptor on the beginning of his job title, or even the fact that he was in an entirely new part of Tokyo, where he felt about as lost as Ryoga Hibiki on a good day, but rather due to the letter he had clenched in a white knuckled fist. It had only been a week since his mother disappeared, without a trace, into thin air. Everyone from the Amazons to Kodachi Kuno had claimed responsibility for it, the former in an attempt to leverage him into marrying Shampoo in order to get her back, and the latter because she thought she'd disposed of the red haired harridan and his heart would now belong to her. Well, when he said the Amazons, he wasn't being entirely fair, since it had been Shampoo who claimed it, and Cologne who hit her in the head so hard it knocked her out and left a dent in the table.

Still, none of her tracking or scrying magic, most of which he'd been quite fine not knowing about, thank you very much, had turned up a hair of the Saotome matriarch. Other than in her hairbrush, but that was hardly helpful. Even the old man had been gone for days, and he looked like he hadn't slept for most of them when he'd come across him in Chiba the day before.

Now, he was in the tenth district of the Minato ward, holding a cryptic letter that told him that his mother would meet him in an apartment there. Checking the number of the building he was standing in front of, he nodded shortly, shoving the paper into a pocket.

HR.

Ami Mizuno really, really wanted to reach for the Mercury Computer. She knew she shouldn't, but it had the largest technical and encyclopedic database she'd ever seen, and the biology homework she was doing now was fascinating. She'd gone over the entire chapter in her textbook, but she knew that it'd be impractical to go out to the library at 8:30 at night to get more reading material. Unfortunately, she knew that reading up on the information in the computer was a bad idea. Not only would she likely get so engrossed in the articles that she would forget to do the rest of her work until midnight, ending up with almost Usagi-esque hand writing, but the one time she'd accidentally quoted Silver Millennium findings in an astronomy assignment, she'd gotten a much lower grade because the stars had shifted so much over the last 10,000 years.

She caught herself as her hand crept towards the computer once again, and sighed, putting down her pencil. Her mother would be home in about half an hour, and she was usually rather irritated when the blue haired girl missed meals. She would pick up on her studying afterward, hopefully with a little more self-restraint.

Standing from her study desk, Ami thought about what to eat, but eventually decided on yet another cup of ramen. She was half way through deciding between chicken and beef, and was half way across the apartment's small living room when a loud knock came at the door. The teenage girl jumped, wondering if someone was shooting at her, before the knock came again. She frowned, asking herself who would be so insistent to talk to her or her mother at this time of night, and wondering if it was one of the woman's patients' parents. Quickly moving to the door, she pulled it open, smiling. "Hell... oh."

The boy in front of her was one of the angriest people she'd ever seen. This was saying something, as she'd seen Youma, angry parents, and Rei within the same short time span. "Where is she?" the boy demanded, shortly.

Ami gulped. She was relatively sure that if she didn't answer his question correctly, something really bad was going to happen. "Um, m... my mother will be home in about half an hour," she offered, hopefully.

The boy glared. That had obviously not been what he wanted to hear, but he didn't do anything to Ami, instead reaching into a pocket and producing a Polaroid snapshot of himself, looking much less murderous, standing between a short, balding man in a white fighting gi and a regal looking woman in a formal kimono. "Where is she?" he repeated.

"Sir, I... I'm afraid you've got the wrong apartment," Ami started, uncertainly. "No one who looks like that lives here... or even near here, that I've seen."

The boy didn't say anything this time, just removing yet another thing from a pocket. At first, the blue haired girl thought it was a wadded up chocolate bar wrapper, but when she unfolded it she saw a neatly scribed note. "Ranma, if you wish to know what happened to your mother, please visit..." the address matched her apartment's. She suddenly realized why he was so angry. If it had been her, she probably would have changed into Sailor Mercury and kicked down some doors, with or without the others' help. "Someone must have played a prank on you, and not a very funny one," she explained shortly. "I really haven't seen her."

The boy lost some of his tension, but not much. "Ya mind if I look around?" he asked, though she was pretty sure it wasn't a request.

Even so, she nodded, stepping back from the door and letting him enter the room. The gaze he swept around it reminded her of Luna when she thought no one was looking and she was stalking mice. Abruptly, he started forward, his eyes locked on her room. Ami considered stopping him, but doubted she could without transforming, given how determined his stride was.

Opening her door, he entered, approaching her desk and bending over the Mercury Computer, which was vibrating and beeping softly. The Senshi of Mercury flinched as he opened the little palmtop up, peering into the screen. He squinted at it, before handing it to her.

"Oh, sorry, this is just my Gameboy, I was playing with it before you came in!" she said, quickly, hoping he'd assume that it was a new model or something and leave it at that. She was studying the readout, noting that it was reporting a very unusual energy source nearby, when the boy said something that made her almost drop it in shock.

"Um, since when did they make video games with magic?"

"Um, erm," the girl said, realizing that she sounded a lot like Usagi trying to explain to Haruna-sensei why she was late again. "Because, um, what do you mean?"

The boy looked at her incredulously, and she was only saved from continuing to flail about by the sound of the front door opening. She was startled at the speed he displayed as he turned, taking up what sort of looked like one of Makoto's martial stances facing her mother, and another woman, who looked suspiciously like the one in the picture earlier.

"Mom!" He blurred forward, out of the stance, across the living room and past Ami's mother so fast that the dark haired woman had to brace herself against the door frame, grabbing the auburn haired one in a hug that looked like it could crush bones.

HR.

"Well, that went well," Saeko Mizuno said, as she, her daughter, Nodoka and Ranma Saotome sat around the apartment's small coffee table, cups of tea set before each of them. The young martial artist looked as though he needed his, almost jumping in place.

"Look, um, sorry for bein' so nuts earlier," the boy muttered, looking down into his cup. "'S just that I didn't expect anyone to go after Mom. Akane or the others, yeah, but..."

"That's all right, Saotome-san," Ami nodded across the table to the pigtailed martial artist. "I understand."

"Wow, No-chan," the older Mizuno said, causing her daughter's eyes to widen. "He's really much more polite than you were."

Nodoka blushed slightly. "Well, I didn't say it was a perfect emulation," she justified.

"A what?" Ranma asked, confused, while Ami looked intrigued.

"It's... a very long story," the auburn haired woman returned, before taking a sip of her tea. Just as she suspected that her son was going to burst at the seams, she continued, "It starts off with my informing you, Ranma, and you, Ami, that you have a new sibling. Or, well... not really a new one, but..." She stopped, looking confused.

Saeko sighed. "Ami, Ranma, you're brother and sister," she clarified, wishing that Nodoka was a little less prone to beating around the bush.

Ranma did a little bit of quick thinking. He was obviously related to his mother. If nothing else, his cursed form's bright red hair proved that much, and Ami's blue hair was obviously from her own mother, which meant... "The ol' bastard..." he growled, half way out of his seat before his mother put up a hand.

"Genma didn't cheat on me," she clarified, quickly. "I sort of, accidentally, cheated on him."

"Sort of accidentally?" the words were spat out in an incredulous tone before Ranma could stop himself. "Then who's my father?"

"Genma is your father," Nodoka said, assuredly.

Amy looked on, confused, as did Ranma for a few moments, until his brain seemed to click through a train of thought, the look on his face changing from unsure, to concerned, to shocked in about five seconds. "You... what?" he sputtered, clearly unable to articulate what he was thinking.

"Seems he's a lot smarter than you acted, too." Saeko said, causing Nodoka's eyebrow to twitch.

"Excuse me..." Ami said, her voice starting out quiet, "But could someone tell me what in the world is going on here?"

"Well, Ami..." Nodoka started, reluctantly.

The blue haired girl's mother sighed, as the redhead next to her hemmed and hawed. Picking up a small glass of water from the center of the table, she dumped it over Nodoka's head. "This is your father."

Ami fainted. Ranma's reaction was much more measured. "Damn it, why is it I'm only right about the really bad stuff?"

HR.

"Well," Ranma leaned back in his rather comfortable chair, holding the cold remnants of his cup of tea. "At least you didn't piss off the Amazons," he muttered, surprised that he was saying something like that to his mother, and she was looking sheepish about it. "Wait, you didn't, right?"

Nodoka nodded. "I did recall enough about them to stay well clear."

Ranma rubbed his forehead, as Dr. Mizuno came back into the room from her daughter's bedroom. The boy looked nervously at her, not terribly sure how to treat her or react around her. Technically, she was his mother's... what, Mistress? Girlfriend? She'd always been pretty accepting of him having those, but he'd never considered it, and certainly never considered her doing it. And her explanation... "A time traveling tennis shirt?" he finally asked, just for something to say.

His mother shrugged, before reaching into a bag that was sitting by her feet and tossing a wadded up piece of clothing at him. He caught it, and read the tag. "Warning: Do not tumble-dry. Product of China. Tod Tennisson's Temporal Tennis Shirt. 'Whenever you go, then you are.' Please note: 100 years between uses. No returns, no refunds." Underneath the original lettering, was a scribbled street address in what looked like permanent marker, covering a "Do not remove under threat of prosecution" warning. He rolled his eyes. By now, he should have learned not to question this sort of thing, and the most unbelievable part of it, really, was that Kodachi had touched such a 'common garment.'

Having gotten past all of the questions he'd needed to ask, and noting that the auburn haired woman before him was looking at him expectantly, the pigtailed boy closed his eyes in thought. "Um," he continued after a few moments, "How're you gunna tell the old man about this?"

Nodoka just froze, her expectant look fading before being replaced with a consternated one. "Damn," she muttered, causing Ranma to twitch, though he did make a mental note to remind her of the lapse next time he swore in female form and she muttered about young ladies and foul language.

HR.

When her eyes shot open, Ami Mizuno was surprised that she wasn't in a cold sweat. Granted, her dream hadn't been scary, exactly, but it had definitely been surprising. Turning her head, she saw that it was still dark out the window, the only light that filtered in being that of the streetlights below.

On her computer, which she'd left open at her bedside the night before for some reason, the current time shone out at her, informing her that it was far too early for her to be awake. She was about to roll over and try to go back to sleep, when she noted the large box of streaming data in the middle of the palmtop's tiny display, "Unknown Energy Reading" still visible on the top line.

She shot up and grabbed the device immediately, realizing that the same reading had been part of her dream, and was in fact showing the exact same graph. Putting it down, she swung out of bed, realizing that she was still in her clothes from the night before. Tiptoeing out of the room and into the living room, she saw two forms, one on the couch, and the other curled up in the middle of the floor.

Slowly, the blue haired girl crept towards the darkened lumps, wishing to confirm or assuage her fears, but not wishing to wake them, if they were humans rather than large traveling bags, or something. She was abruptly assured of that fact, when the lump on the floor lashed out an arm, grabbing her by one leg and yanking.

"Nngh!" she articulated, the end result of swallowing a scream as a set of blue eyes met hers, and she realized that she'd been caught before hitting the floor.

"Oh, Ami, right? Sorry 'bout that," the owner of the eyes whispered, letting her roll onto her back. "I'm always sorta jumpy the first night in a new place."

"That's all right," the Senshi of Mercury said, relieved that the other could, probably, not have seen the panicked look on her face when she first fell. Staring into the ceiling, or rather, the darkness where it was, she muttered, "Last night wasn't a dream, was it?"

The sigh she heard in return was far more world weary than any eighteen year old had a right to be. "Afraid not," he responded.

"But... how?" she finally decided to say, after a few more seconds of silence.

"Like Mom said, it's a long story," Ranma replied. "Mom's rolling around a bit too much; ya mind if I try and explain it somewhere we won't disturb people?" What he actually meant, of course, was somewhere her outraged or disbelieving exclamations wouldn't be heard, but for once, he had the common sense not to say it.

The blue haired girl considered. On the one hand, the request the boy she'd never met had just made was so suspicious even Usagi would have noticed, but she did have her transformation pen in her pocket, along with her Senshi communicator. "All right," she finally said, climbing to her feet and heading for the entry alcove to get her shoes.

It was only a few minutes later that the two of them were walking down the eerily quiet street, and Ranma was looking up at the lights as they passed beneath them. Ami would have made some attempt to get him to start speaking, however she was instead taking the opportunity to observe him. He was, as Makoto would say, a major hunk, but that only impinged on her brain for a second before she categorized it and moved on. He moved much like Rei did when she was working at the shrine, even though his mind was obviously on something completely different.

"Right," he finally said, nodding. "I'm probably gunna screw this up, so try 'n let me explain before killing me, okay?"

Ami nodded slowly, obviously confused.

"The first question's kinda redundant, since I already know you've got that magic Gameboy, and something magic in your pocket that I can't quite figure out," Ranma started, resulting in a surprised 'eep' from Ami as one hand went to a pants pocket to check that her pen was still there. "I don't really wanna know what they are, but the thing that happened to my Mom is magic that feels a lot like them." He shrugged. "Not that I know what any other magic feels like."

It took the Senshi of ice a few seconds to reconstruct the mangled grammar she'd just been subjected to, but after, she nodded.

Ranma returned it, glad that he wasn't going to have to go through the usual song and dance that came along with someone who didn't believe magic was real, even when they were exposed to it. Of course, now he had to deal with explaining time travel, and even he didn't really know what was going on there. "About a week ago, someone who thought they were attacking me got my mom with a magical time travel artifact." He kept to himself the nature of the artifact. After all, it was hard enough to believe as it was. "She also hit her really hard before doing so, and probably poisoned her with somethin that most militaries consider illegal."

"I hope the authorities dealt with this person," Ami said, deciding that she would take the time travel as a given for now.

"Nah," Ranma shrugged. "She's a Kuno." At the blank, uncomprehending look, he decided to continue. "Well, apparently something screwed up Mom's head pretty bad because when she recovered, she thought she was me."

"She... How could she do that? You're male and a lot younger than she is." Ami burst out, incredulously.

"Well, Kodachi was probably screaming insults at me the whole time," The pigtailed martial artist looked uncomfortable. "As for being a guy," he stepped over to the edge of the sidewalk, kicking off one of his shoes, which Ami only now realized was actually a soft slipper, and dunking a foot into a large puddle that had been left by a sudden, unpredicted and quickly passing storm the day before. Abruptly, his form twisted in on itself, seeming to do the reverse of what she'd seen earlier, until a short redhead stood in his place, adjusting the drawstring on her pants.

"I see." The statement was perfectly deadpan, and the eyes of the person who said it were very, very flat. This was strange; even her own mind thought so. After all, she'd seen perfectly normal looking people morph into demons with pop-off heads or gills, but it also reinforced the shock she'd had earlier, and then, she knew, she hadn't sensed, nor had her computer detected, any dark energy at all.

The redhead leaned in close to Ami's face, staring into her eyes. "You aren't gunna faint again, are you?" she asked, worriedly.

"Oh, no. I'm fine," Ami lied.

Ranma decided not to call her on it, and pressed on. "Yeah, well, she thought she was locked in female form. That's why she's got the curse now, she was trying to fix it."

"But, um, what does it have to do with me, and your mother and mine..." Her brain sort of ground to a halt on the last statement, and Ranma couldn't really blame her.

"Well, the thing about Mom is that she doesn't really know me that well. We only actually met about half a year ago after I went on a really long martial arts training trip, and she's got some… ideas about me."

"Ideas?" the blue haired girl asked, even though it felt like she was charging towards a bottomless pit.

"Yeah, she wants me to be really manly, and sorta thinks I am."

"So... what, you prefer to be a girl?" Ami asked.

"No! I'm a guy!" the redhead said, quickly, "It's just Mom thinks of manly men dating lots of pretty girls and having mistresses..." she shrugged helplessly, obviously not really understanding what she was describing.

"So... your mother," Ami started, slowly. "Seduced my mother, while she thought she was you, because she thought it was manly?"

"That's pretty much it, yeah." Ranma responded.

Ami Mizuno was usually a very polite girl. It had taken her so long to make friends mostly because she was simply too shy to try it on her own, and most students avoided her due to her intelligence and seeming standoffishness. However, even she had her limits. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!" she burst out, her head turned up to the sky.

"Yeah, but it don't stop it from being true," the martial artist returned, casually.

The blue haired girl slumped, her entire frame looking exhausted. "I know." she muttered, quietly.

END.


End file.
